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The United States is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of a range of agricultural commodities, and the largest provider of foreign assistance, so U.S. policies have big effects on global food security and other global public goods linked to agriculture. On the positive side of the ledger, President Obama created the Feed the Future aid initiative to promote agricultural development in poorer countries as a tool to achieve the global goals of ending hunger and extreme poverty, which are mostly rural. But that generosity is undercut by U.S. support for farmers that distorts global markets and ignores negative spillovers for the rest of the world.

In this book, Kimberly Ann Elliott focuses on three policy areas that are particularly damaging for developing countries: traditional agricultural subsidy and trade policies that support the incomes of American farmers at the expense of farmers elsewhere; the biofuels mandate, which in its current form increases market volatility while doing little if anything to mitigate climate change; and weak regulation of antibiotic use in livestock, which contributes to the global spread of drug-resistant super bugs. While noting that broad reforms are needed to fix these problems, Elliott also identifies practical steps that U.S. policymakers could take in the relatively short run to improve farm policies—for American taxpayers and consumers as well as for the poor and vulnerable in developing countries.

Book Details

184 Pages

Center For Global Development, June 27, 2017

Paperback ISBN:
9781933286983

Ebook ISBN:
9781944691004

About the Author

Kimberly Ann Elliott is a senior fellow with the Center for Global Development and the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on trade policy and globalization, economic sanctions, and food security. Her book, Delivering on Doha: Farm Trade and the Poor, was copublished in July 2006 by the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She served on a National Research Council committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards and on the USDA Consultative Group on the Elimination of Child Labor in U.S. Agricultural Imports, and is currently a member of the National Advisory Committee for Labor Provisions in U.S. Free Trade Agreements.